


It's Such a Cliché

by heavenscalyx (Jude)



Series: I Won't Treat You Like You're Typical [1]
Category: Ghostbusters (2016)
Genre: F/F, Shameless Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-03
Updated: 2016-08-03
Packaged: 2018-07-29 02:57:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,401
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7667575
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jude/pseuds/heavenscalyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Abby and Holtzmann have a nice, normal working relationship at the Higgins Institute... well, for certain values of normal.  And Abby has the typical problem that those of us who spend a lot of time on computers do: random back spasms.  But Holtzmann has something for that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Such a Cliché

"Ow!" Abby Yates leaned back from the computer and tried to stretch the painful spasm out of the inner hollow of her scapula. "What the heck have I done to myself?" 

"Been bent over for too long," Holtzmann said from across the their cluttered lab in the basement of the Higgins Institute. "That's why I move around when I'm working." She was hunched in what looked like a wildly uncomfortable pose over a circuit board, one foot up on a chair, and as far as Abby could tell, she hadn't moved in at least an hour.

"Holtzmann, you dance while you're working," Abby said, regarding her research partner across their already surprisingly jam-packed lab. "I can't _dance_ while I'm working on a paper." _And I can't work on my paper while_ you're _dancing, either, because I can't_ not _watch you._ She stretched her arms over her head, only to wince at the hitch of pain in her back again.

"Sure you can," Holtzmann said, and she unfolded, arching back over the top of her chair. "How do you think I wrote my dissertation? You can't imagine Gorin let me get out without writing something."

"I can't imagine you sitting still long enough to write a full paragraph," Abby admitted. _And I can't imagine anyone who could manage to be your advisor long enough for you to get a PhD. I can only imagine what you were like in college and grad school. Someday, I'll have to meet Dr. Gorin._ Abby wriggled her shoulders, bending to one side, then the other. The knot in her shoulderblade refused to move.

"Hang on, I have something for that," Holtzmann said, and disappeared into the back room. A few moments later, she emerged with something that looked like a miniature pile driver over her shoulder.

"What," Abby said, scooting her chair backward away from both Holtzmann and her computer, "is that?" _After a year of working together, I shouldn't be surprised by anything..._

Holtzmann set her burden down and gazed at it lovingly. "Dual-piston electropercussion device." She grinned and hugged it. "It was my side project while I was studying for comps. All the other grad students in my department — well, in all the other departments too — volunteered to be test subjects." 

"What does it do?" Abby said dubiously. It had two side-by-side cylinders tipped in black rubber, gears, a motor, and a pair of handles reminiscent of a massive weed whacker.

"Loosens up muscular cramping." Holtzmann looked it over critically. "Also, most other muscles, but that kind of targeted stimulation of limb skeletal muscles tends to be… a little overwhelming."

"You have got to be kidding," Abby said. _Still, I can see everyone volunteering to be Holtzmann's guinea pigs. Well. The women at least._

"It works, and it's not even nuclear-powered," Holtzmann said, and then sighed. "Gorin never _did_ let me work on nukes unsupervised." She gestured Abby over to the ancient, broken-down, black-and-brown-striped curb couch in the corner and picked the thing back up. "Go on, lie down."

Abby paused briefly to admire Holtzmann's wiry forearms and scarred hands in fingerless red-brown leather gloves as they flexed to pick up the device. With some reservations and a carefully-curated trust in her research partner, Abby folded her glasses onto a table, then moved to the couch on which she had often napped during late nights of mad inspiration, desperate funding brainstorming, and frustrated mid- and end-of-semester grading. 

"You might want to take your sweater and shirt off," Holtzmann suggested, sliding her goggles into place. "There have been occasional detrimental effects from applying this device to fabric."

Abby gave her a suspicious sidelong look. Holtzmann responded with one of her mad wolfish grins. After a moment, Abby got up, went to the lab door, shut it, and made sure it was locked. _Not like anyone actually comes by all that often._ Then she walked back to the couch, shrugging out of her black cardigan and the long striped blouse under it. Womanfully repressing her automatic blush (would memories of the high school gym locker room _ever_ stop haunting her?), she lowered herself facefirst onto the tattered throw pillow, tucked one arm under it, and dangled the other arm off the couch.

The pillow smelled of the distinct mix of oil, soap, and ozone that she associated with leaning over Holtzmann to look at her latest gizmo. It felt weirdly intimate to be lying there, nose full of Holtzmann, who had clearly been napping on this couch a lot more than Abby.

The engine started up with a wheeze, and then emitted a chug-chug-chug sound. Holtzmann whooped, then choked on the diesel fumes that wafted over them both. Abby buried her face in the pillow, preferring to breathe Holtzmann's scent than Holtzmann's graduate school hydrocarbon emissions.

That was okay, because for the next few minutes, she really couldn't breathe at all.

The thumping started between her shoulderblades, the pistons coming down on either side of her spine. The impacts grew heavier as Holtzmann settled more of the mass of the device on her, and then the thing started _walking_ up and down her back. _Is it autonomous or is that Holtzmann moving it?_ She would believe either, given what she'd seen of her lab partner's work.

She started to feel a very low-grade electric buzz with every thud, briefly tensing, then releasing the muscles underneath it. The pistons started to warm up. She noticed, obscurely, that the device stayed above the lower edge of her ribcage, avoiding dangerous kidney territory.

Her back was being steadily pummelled by a warm, zappy, heavy, double-barrelled jackhammer.

Abby lost track of time. There was the Holtzmann pillow and a loudly hypnotic device drumming onto her in a regular rhythm, so it wasn't surprising that she might have tranced out a little. Just a little. Okay, maybe there was some drool on the pillow. 

She startled awake when the pounding suddenly stopped.

"Wha--?" Abby said, lifting her face out of the pillow and squinting around in the too-bright flickery fluorescent light of the lab. The world was swimmy, wavering, fluid. She was pretty sure the last time she had been this relaxed was… actually, she _never_ remembered being this relaxed.

Holtzmann's grin appeared next to her, just off the port bow of the good ship Couch. "How do you feel?"

"Drunk?" Abby said.

"That's a new one for the data points," Holtzmann said, then grimaced. "Apologies, but your brassiere appears to be, uh, in short, toast."

"Huh," Abby said, distracted by the sensation of every muscle moving individually in her back, instead of as a solid block of concrete masquerading as muscle. "How toast?"

Holtzmann leaned out of her range of vision, then came back, holding a few examples of twisted, ruined hooks attached to scraps of fabric. Abby squinted at them. Holtzmann flashed another grin, utterly delighted.

"Whatever," Abby said, resting her cheek on the pillow. _It was old anyway. All my bras are old. Who can afford new bras on a shitty adjunct professor's income?_ She felt really goddamn good. It was like relaxing her back had reconnected her awareness with the lower half of her body. Her whole body. Everything outside her skull. 

Holtzmann examined Abby clinically, and cocked her head to one side. Abby almost started laughing at the quizzical expression, but she felt just _too damn good_ right then. In a spontaneous rush of affection she hadn't felt since Erin had left, she flung out one noodly arm and hooked Holtzmann around the neck, pulling her in for what should have been a nerdily awkward one-arm hug. 

How the kiss started, Abby was never quite certain. When she reconstructed that moment later in her head, it involved some half-formed idea that she was going to tell Holtzmann some hyperbolic lie about loving her, and then there was the whole awkwardness of having Holtzmann's face too close to really talk to and Holtzmann really smelling like _Holtzmann_ , moreso than the pillow had, but Abby was already moving her mouth, and it all seemed natural and normal, especially with the tingling that was running straight down her spine to her toes, with a sizeable eddy of tingle between her legs.

Holtzmann didn't react the way Erin had that first time Abby had kissed her — the whole jumping up and running away thing. No, Holtzmann made a humming noise deep in her throat and rocked forward onto her knees at Abby's side. One hand slid across Abby's tenderized back, and with the new exquisite sensitivity of that skin, she could tell exactly where Holtzmann's hot fingertips stopped and the cooler glove started.

Abby's neck pained threateningly at the awkward angle. Equally reluctant to lose her moments of precious relaxation or Holtzmann's thrilling lips, she rolled onto her side, pulling Holtzmann forward as she did so. The shreds of fabric that had once been her over-the-shoulder boulder holder gave up with nary an attempt to restrain her bosom, and so she squeaked at the rough fabric of Holtzmann's overalls sliding against her bare skin.

She could feel Holtzmann grinning again, and that just made her ravenous for more. When Holtzmann pulled back, Abby bit her lower lip gently, and pulled her back in. Abby hadn't realized she'd been denying her thing for Holtzmann — her "thing", as if wanting to run her hands over that mobile face, under the eclectic clothes, through the ridiculous hair, aching to have those talented hands on her own skin, to have those lips and that tongue working on something other than smartass remarks, was just a "thing."

Abby caught her breath to keep from squeaking again as a calloused thumb brushed over the hard tip of one nipple. She pulled Holtzmann against her harder, and made an undignified noise into Holtzmann's mouth. Holtzmann laughed and bit her throat, which made her draw breath sharply.

"Was all this just to get my clothes off?" Abby said breathily as Holtzmann considered where to bite next. She whimpered when teeth closed on the flesh of her breast.

Holtzmann snorted air over Abby's skin in what was probably a laugh, and said, "Happens about fifty percent of the time when I give a woman a backrub. Though this probably increases my winning percentage."

Abby stared at Holtzmann disbelievingly. "That was not exactly a backrub. And that is _such_ a cliché, Holtzmann."

"Whatever works," Holtzmann said, looking over the rim of her glasses, and closed her hot mouth over the closest of Abby's nipples. Her tongue sent a jolt through Abby that wrenched another gasp from her.

Abby couldn't help imagining the ever-warmer waves shimmering through her nerve endings as some kind of wave pool, and the interference patterns caused by Holtzmann's fingers gently working her other breast, the images in the back of her head chasing the sensations. What was happening at the points of superposition? Definitely constructive interference, because the amplitude kept rising.

Somewhere in there, she shucked the rag ends of her bra off the couch.

Panting, Abby said, "You know, this is a terrible idea. We work together all day long."

"I'm good at focusing," Holtzmann said, relinquishing the abused nipple and nuzzling down to Abby's belly to the waist of her slacks. Abruptly, she grinned up at Abby and said, "Orrrrr I could stop. You know. For science."

Abby laced her fingers through Holtzmann's bleached hair and gripped tight. "Don't you _dare_ stop now, Holtzmann."

Holtzmann's mouth fell open and she emitted a very satisfying, heat-inducing, "Ahh-haa-haaaaa," in a rising set of tones. After a moment, she said, "Yes, _ma'am_ , Dr. Yates, _ma'am_."

Abby pulled Holtzmann up onto the couch, mostly on top of her, and unfastened one shoulder of the overalls. "I like the sound of that," she purred in Holtzmann's ear, tightening her grip on the back of her hair infinitesimally. Holtzmann yelped softly. Abby slid her other hand inside the overalls and down, and gripped Holtzmann's crotch through her boxers, feeling the wetness soaking through the thin cotton. "You like that?"

Holtzmann hissed through her teeth and pressed her hips against Abby's hand.

"It's not like you, Holtz, to consider giving up a project once you start it," Abby said, nipping the blonde's neck just under her earlobe. She stroked her fingers carefully up into the wet fabric until she could feel the labia part and found Holtz's clit, which drew a sharp gasp from the engineer.

Holtzmann flashed one of her most mercurial grins and tossed her goggles and glasses off to the side, where they clattered across the grubby tile floor. "Most of my designs don't involve other living beings." She let her legs slide to either side of Abby's hips, opening herself up.

"I think this experiment is going to explode, though, don't you?" Abby whispered. She slid her hand inside the fly of the boxers, through the damp curls, to Holtz's hot slickness. "Is this enough? Or do you want me inside?"

"Yesssss," Holtzmann said, grinding desperately against Abby's hand. She kissed Abby hard, holding onto the arm of the couch over Abby's head.

Abby slid her fingers back, finding the source of the wetness, and gently explored the opening. Holtzmann held her hips perfectly still. Slowly, slowly, Abby circled and delved just her fingertip in, then back out, then repeated, until Holtzmann let out a thin, pleading whine. Then Abby pushed two fingers inside, and Holtzmann let out the breath she'd been mostly-holding in a soft moan.

Letting go of Holtzmann's hair, Abby unfastened the other shoulder of the overalls and ran her hand up inside Holtzmann's t-shirt, reveling in the contrast between the feverish skin of the engineer's belly and bare breast and the slippery deluge in her pants. Holtzmann and Abby breathed hard into each other's mouths as Abby pressed up deeply, curling her fingers along the silky ridges. The blonde's hips twitched and moved in a rhythm that Abby didn't set, riding the physicist's hand faster. Abby lost track of everything else except Holtzmann's hungry mouth and the urgent need to hear what she sounded like when she came.

Holtzmann obliged her unspoken desire with a throaty roar, muffled in Abby's throat, as all her muscles locked tight around her climax. Fingers still moving to keep the waves rolling, Abby started to murmur nonsense in Holtzmann's ear: "Yes, yesss, so beautiful, so wet, so very wet, keep going for me, keep it going, I want to make you come until you can't stand it, show me how many explosions you can give me, Holtz, come on…"

The engineer reared up and looked down, wild-eyed at Abby, peeled off her t-shirt and threw it aside, and obediently kept moving, leaning on the back of the couch as well as the arm now. Abby gazed up at those perfect, pale breasts and reached up to take hold of one nipple, which was surprisingly small in her fingers (she had a moment of flashback, remembering how Erin's felt in her fingers, on her tongue, remembered measuring her nipple tips while they both giggled — exactly 3/8ths of an inch across, _I wonder if Holtz has measured hers, I wonder if she'd mind me measuring hers_ ) and pulled gently, drawing a low growl from Holtzmann.

Abby carefully slid a third finger inside, and Holtzmann groaned. "That'll do it, if you want explosions, Dr. Yates, that'll do it," she said, eyes fluttering shut, head thrown back.

"I _want_ explosions, Holtz," Abby said, thrusting up so the heel of her hand was rubbing Holtzman's clit. "I want spontaneous fucking human combustion."

Holtz's head dropped forward, bright blue eyes open wide, and the most terrifyingly predatory smile Abby had ever seen spread across the engineer's vulpine features. "Abby," she whispered, "why haven't you done this to me before?" And then her whole body rocked backward, caught in the electric arc of orgasm.

Abby's hand was pinned inside her, inside the fierce incendiary heat of Holtzmann, and she wasn't sure she would have a hand after this. She couldn't take her eyes off the taut, wiry bow of the blonde's body, and just kept rippling her fingers inside gently. 

Holtzmann was suspended, motionless and voiceless, head back, mouth open, for what felt like a burning eternity, and then gently collapsed onto Abby, burying her face in the brunette's neck with little sighing moans. 

They lay like that for several minutes, until Abby carefully pulled out, stretching her cramped hand and wrist, and then drew her sopping wet hand up out of Holtzmann's boxers and overalls.

Holtzmann raised her head and took hold of Abby's hand. Locking eyes with Abby, she ran her tongue up the back of Abby's fingers, then closed her mouth over the three most responsible for what had gone before. Abby couldn't look away from that performance, and if she hadn't noticed the strained, swollen ache between her legs before, she certainly noticed it now. Holtz ran her tongue up one side and down the other of each finger, lingering in the soft skin of the juncture leading to the next finger, staring into Abby's eyes, and then ended by licking delicately down to the center of Abby's palm.

Abby stroked her cheek with her free hand, fingers traveling along Holtz's jaw. "If that was an audition for a part you wanted, you're hired," she said.

Holtz leaned forward to kiss her greedily, then slid backwards, trailing her mouth like a hot iron down over Abby's breasts and belly. She hooked her fingers in Abby's waistband and pulled, and Abby lifted her hips to aid in the departure of her slacks and sodden underwear. 

_I'm never going to be able to look at this couch the same way again,_ Abby thought. _Though maybe we'll just keep doing this on it until it breaks down under us._

Holtzmann used both hands to part Abby's thighs, and she stared down, faintly smiling, as if she'd had a marvelous revelation from the sights there. Then she looked up to Abby with a questioning glance, and Abby nodded. Holtz bent down and kissed the fleshy area over Abby's pubic bone, then, with chin and nose, burrowed in to find her clit with such accuracy that Abby nearly levitated from the first touch.

Holtzmann laughed into her and began doing things with lips and tongue and, occasionally, teeth, that Abby certainly couldn't follow except that it was driving her right up the peak that she usually took at least an hour to hike up by herself. Holtz's mouth — oh, and there was a finger, or maybe two, inside and pressing forward and 

— Abby muffled her scream on her fist, hips rising fast and hard with the violent arching of her body, and Holtz followed her, gripping her hips and thighs, and Abby's free hand was in her hair, holding her there, just there, keeping the series of detonations running in a perfect demolition of everything that was Abby, the world forgotten, the lab forgotten, everything forgotten, supports crumbling into exhausted limp blankness.

When Abby could speak again, she managed, "Wow."

Holtzmann kissed her inner thigh.

After another moment, Abby added, "Why _haven't_ we done this before?"

"Dunno," Holtzmann said. "Though it probably had something to do with working relationships and research."

"Come up here," Abby said, gently tugging on Holtz's hair again. Holtzmann crawled up and, hands braced around her again, bent to kiss her. Abby tasted herself on Holtz's lips, salty and a little musky, and kissed her harder for it, pulling her down to lie on her again.

Holtzmann laughed into her mouth. "You know, you've given me some great ideas. More explosions! I could build ghost grenades that disrupt the ghost's materialization matrix…"

"Holtzmann, if I knew that sexing you up would stimulate your brain even more than usual," Abby said, "I would've done this a long time ago."

"A lot of things stimulate my brain. Sex, music, dancing, greasy food…"

"Noted. All the things the Puritans said would bring the downfall of civilization or something."

"Behold!" Holtzmann said, waving her hands and grinning down at Abby. "You have sexed up the end of the world!"

Abby dragged her back down and said in her ear, "I think the end of the world needs some more sex."

"I would like to subscribe to your apocalyptic newsletter," Holtzmann said, kissing her again.

**Author's Note:**

> My hope is that I'm going to do a series of stories like this with all the Ghostbusters, ending with them as a big ol' poly quad. We shall see whether that materializes, but I've got the starts for two others going right now. *fingers crossed*


End file.
